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50 Worst Football Kits Ever

It must be difficult trying to come up with a new football kit design. You're fairly constrained by the team's colours and most of the good ones have been done before. But clearly the pressure of having to produce a new one every season, and the recent requirement for third and fourth kits, have just led to designers occasionally going a little bit insane. It's the only possible explanation for this eye-watering gallery of style abominations.

We present 50 of the worst football kits of all time. Prepare to enter a fashion-free zone.

Don't let that man's suave appearance fool you. This is a hideous football kit. Created to 'celebrate' the club's 150th anniversary, the shirt is apparently filled with glorious scenes from the club's past. But it's a total mess, complete with 70s-style yellow lining. Nein.

This looks like they really wanted to go for the triangles, but didn't quite have the guts to do them across the whole shirt, so it just looks strange. If it's any consolation, the triangles across the whole shirt would have been virtually as bad.

Barcelona may now be a byword for class and style, but it wasn't always the case. This design has no logic to it whatsoever. And the colours just look strange. It's like an unwell fish or something. And what are the flaps all about?

Just because Salvador Dalí was Spanish, doesn't mean he should influence their football shirts. Top marks for attempting to incorporate some surrealism into your kit, but it basically looks like you've spilt tomato ketchup over yourselves there lads.

We're still not sure what Birmingham were thinking. For their 3rd kit in the 72/73 and 73/74 seasons, they wore a jersey which can only be described as a German flag. Were there lots of German players in their team at the time and they wanted to make them feel at home? No, there weren't. Just bizarre.

Just where do you start? is the zig-zag line a performance indicator for the coming season? Why is that such a horrible shade of lime green? Why does the top right-hand quadrant look like someone's accidentally split brown paint over it? Dreadful.

Regularly voted the worst strip of all time and for good reason: whoever thought that a brown strip was a good idea? The one bonus was that you wouldn't look any different after a mudbath January match.

It's got a terrible sponsor, the fonts must have been chosen by a 4-year-old and it looks like it took 2 minutes to design. Most baffling, though, are the arms, which have been adorned by permanent black armbands: poor County will look like they're commemorating someone's death every time they step on the pitch.

Tartan should only be seen in the crowd - and only then in the form of kilts and 'comedy' tartan caps with ginger hair in the Tartan Army. It should never, repeat, never be used on a football shirt. Glad we've made that clear.

For some inexplicable reason, Dundee United decided to go 'Jackson Pollock' on us in 1993. If we found out this was created by a toddler flicking black paint at a canvas we would genuinely not be surprised. Woeful.

A king amongst terrible football shirts, this was universally derided upon its launch for England's home Euro '96 campaign. Just thank your lucky stars that this was before David Seaman's ponytail era, otherwise the combined image would have simply been too much to take.

There's nothing wrong with pink in the right context. But not pink quite as shocking as this. They certainly won't miss each other on the pitch, that's for sure. But what's the big blue oblong about? And why is there a little tidal wave happening at one end?

At first glance, you may think, "what's wrong this this then?". And then you'd look a little closer, and perhaps gaze awhile at the purple section, and then maybe there'd be a dawning realisation that a rather 'controversial' political symbol has made its way into the design. At least, this is what would happen to normal people, but clearly not the designer of Fiorentina's kit in 1992. It had to be hastily withdrawn from sale after the error was spotted.

Fair play to Heerenveen: the little red hearts are in their club crest, and have been on their shirts for a long time. It doesn't stop them looking absolutely ridiculous though. What's truly awful though is that they didn't include them on the arms, thus making it impossible to make a "they wear their heart on their sleeve" joke. And that's unforgivable.

Pity those poor Huddersfield fans. After 1991's monstrosity, less than two years later they were faced with this in the club shop. It looks like a mop shortly after cleaning up an explosion at a paint factory.

As discussed before, nothing wrong with pink. But also as discussed before, there is something wrong with pink this bright. And why have they put a star-shaped biscuit cutter on there? Also loses marks for appearing to be figure-hugging: alright for highly-toned footballers, not so flattering on the beer-bellied supporters in the terraces.

We think we've worked this out. Someone did a rough design using their new felt -tip pens and it got sent to the factory instead of the proper one where they'd designed it properly. That must be it. It must be.

The most recent addition to our hall of fame, this really is a novel way of designing a kit. Three segments, all completely unrelated, purple, black and white bits...some sort of random rhombus shadows...we're really struggling here. This has to have been designed in the dark, it's the only logical explanantion.

Poor Newcastle United fans. As if being run in a way that could charitably be called 'interesting' and perennially underachieving wasn't enough, they were lumbered with this 2-tone banana yellow jersey for their season in the Championship in 09/10. It's so bad it's actually quite funny.

Much like the Hull City tiger strip, this has been the subject of intense debate. Is it actually brilliant? It's almost artistic - and it brings back memories of Jeremy Goss and Chris Sutton at their imperious best. Unfortunately, once someone informs you that it really does look quite a lot like vomit, you can never really get that thought out of your head.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the design here, but one has to question the colour scheme. It's just so...depressing. Given that they wore this during a relegation season, it's a miracle their fans didn't decide to end it all en masse.

Much like the 2000 Italy shirt, this works perfectly well if you're a tall, dark, bronzed mediterranean adonis. Rather less well if you're sporting more of a barrel than a six-pack. What a terrible, terrible idea.

We just don't know what's going on here. There's probably an explanation for why a bowler-hatted, moustached man is on the front of this kit, but even if there is, it really doesn't justify it. Maybe he's scoring it out of 10? Take about 4 points away and you'd be on the money.

Looking like something out of a New York club at the height of disco fever, it's the combination of grey shirt with 45-degree angle purple pinstripe, and the shiny purple shorts that really seals this horrendous kit's place in our list. We'd love to see anyone try and wear this on a Saturday night out in Sheffield and escape intact.

Possibly the crowning glory of all terrible football kits; this must surely have been designed by the manager's grandma, who decided that it the 'patchwork of differing pieces of quilt' look had been cruelly overlooked by football kit designers for too long. It manages the impressive feat of looking like both a bad teatowel and an Aztec ceremonial outfit.